Fashion enthusiasts all over the world have faced this dilemma at least once - you have been invited to a formal dinner, a charity ball, an awards ceremony or a lavish event that requires an equally lavish outfit. You want to wear a beautiful and luxurious dress, but the event is not quite important enough to invest your life savings into an outfit. Besides, just like a wedding dress, you’re likely to only wear this once, so why would you take out a second mortgage just so you can impress your colleagues for just one evening? This is where Drexcode comes to the rescue.

Drexcode is an online platform for luxury clothing hire, and has recently closed a second round of financing for a cool half a million euros. It was founded in May 2014 bt Frederica Storace and Valeria Cambrea, two business women with more than ten years marketing experience behind them. The process is very simple thanks to their easy to use website. In four simple steps, a designer dress will land on your doorstep for your chosen occasion. First you register, then you choose your look and have it delivered. You wear the dress, feel fabulous and have UPS pick it up again for return as quickly as the morning after the night before. With additional free stylist advice, a free second size and a free refund within 24 hours policy, it is the ideal website for those looking to add a bit of designer style to their lives but aren’t quite ready to make the financial commitment yet.

Shopping for dresses: curated and simplified by DrexCode

Drexcode has earnt it’s money from three prominent investors - 70,000 euros from L’Venture Group, 180,000 euros from Innogest and 126,000 euros from Fashion 22. In 2014, the fashion industry in Italy increased by 2.7% and was expected to increase by a further 3.8% in 2015, so these companies saw it as the perfect time in the present financial market to invest in DrexCode. The CEO of L’Venture Group, Luigi Capello, says ‘Fashion start-ups are reaching interesting results on the international scene. This is why we are particularly pleased to have invested in Drexcode.’

Of course Drexcode are not the first to come onto the scene with a luxury dress hire platform. All over the world you can rent luxury and designer outfits, both online and in store, but Capello claims that ‘Drexcode has no significant competitors in Italy and offers a service at competitive prices with great potential.’ It is this, he feels, that what makes it so new and unique in the current fashion industry.

Dresses shown on the Italian Drexcode website

According to the founders, Drexcode represents a great opportunity to captivate the female audience, as it allows them to wear new signature outfits that they can fall in love with. The real challenge they will face is breaking into the European fashion market, which has different consumer habits, styles and relationships with brands. The president of Drexcode, Enrico Mambelli, says that it is ‘a far-sighted and ambitious union of the Italian experience in fashion innovation of the American matrix model.’ Furthermore, he is ‘convinced that the access of trends in Europe is coming to an important development stage and that it is well positioned to amongst the first players to seize this opportunity.’